True, I suppose you can only be so secure...and hope that someone in the cockpit can alert ATC. I was thinking, why not in the future build planes
with a larger cockpit that has a bathroom and a small kitchenette for snacks/drinks. That way, the flight crew would never have to leave the cockpit
the entire flight? Obviously this wouldn't work for existing planes, but perhaps this could be engineered into future planes.

It seems very strange that after the door was locked from the inside, the plane was taken off auto-pilot and made a controlled descent into the
mountain. Could the pilot have been suffering from depression or some other mental illness and this was his way of committing suicide? Some people
have that "If I go I want to take as many people as I can with me" mentality. If this is the case, it's truly a catastrophic tragedy.

My thoughts: 1) How much sleep did the pilot have before the flight? Lack of sleep by the pilot, copilot, or both could have caused mistakes...the
copilot not being able to remember the code, the pilot could have fallen asleep at the controls, any number of small things adding up to a major
catastrophe.

2) We're assuming the copilot left the cockpit to go to the restroom. He could have left to tell the others in the flight crew he had concerns about
the pilot. Being copilot he wouldn't dare say something one-to-one to the pilot. He would go to the flight crew. Maybe the pilot had been drinking,
who knows. Just speculation.

3) We can't rule out a hijacking and intentional crash. In fact that seems to be the most likely scenario, if you go by "what are the chances".
Hopefully we'll find out soon. Lets not forget there's still a Malaysia Air plane lost and not accounted for. That's a year after the fact. The
"accidents" accumulating faster and more often.

If a pilot was outside the cockpit then that would make two people who should know to get in counting the stewardess. If they could hear 'light'
banging on the door I assume they should be able to pick up any yelling through the other side of the door? Also if you figure the couple of minutes
the pilot presumably took to use the bathroom before he tried to re-enter that would mean the pilot's knowledge of the situation escalated in a
shorter timespan than 8 minutes. The details of exactly what the recorded cockpit sounds are should give a clearer picture than they have released to
the public so far. Hopefully they can find more evidence to what happened so there can maybe be some closure for this horrible tragedy.

Maybe it is but it doesn't seem that way. So I went and tried to find some statistics. At this link which is pretty interesting, there's a few charts
and a lot of other information. If you look at the chart that shows "Number Of Fatalties
(Civil Aircraft with 19 or More Passengers)" there is an upward spike trending. Not the highest ever for sure. Overall there are less fatal accidents,
you are correct. Thanks from a landlubber who doesn't fly much. charts

Passengers have died because of driver/pilot medical emergencies since the dawn of the internal combustion engine . Well before that in reality .
Perhaps there needs to be an electronic overide code held by someone not on the plane . If they can make contact with the ground that key could be
given . I am sure sat phones work in planes .

Day two is not the time to be saying it's a cover up or that they're moving slowly. It will be a year or more before the final report is released.

Thank you a thousand times. I just wanted to bump this up because it seems that a goodly number of people have watched entirely too much TV and
actually believe that any mystery can be resolved in a matter of an hour or so.

I have as much curiosity as anyone but I've learned that puzzles are more easily solved when all the pieces are presented.
But I do enjoy reading all the possibilities. I was a bit surprised at the time it took for the alien abduction theory to surface. I think I'll go
with that one until the official statements come out.

Again, Thanks Zap for all your contributions and your patience with our ignorance.

What I find unusual is that they have not named the pilots...Why? It would seem to me to be a deliberate act to crash the plane, even though I was
originally thinking that the pilot in the cockpit might have been overcome with lack of oxygen, but the flight continued on and made a slow controlled
descent.

The fact that the other pilot was 'locked out' indicates to me a deliberate act. Was the pilot in the cockpit of the Islamic faith?

Hmm yeah a mate of mine asked if I had heard about this tragedy. I said to him it's possible it was a bomb or a terrorist attack since there's
nothing left of it except "car parts." From what we heard today that one of the pilots may have been locked outside of the cockpit it's possible
the pilot at the controls was mentally ill and committed suicide or had a heart attack/stroke at the time of the crash. If the latter scenario is the
case then why was the other copilot locked out?! If only the pilots know the code to get into the cockpit and there was nothing sinister or deliberate
about the crash then why did the copilot inside the cockpit manually lock the door from the inside preventing the other pilot from getting in unless
he was up to no good? That's what puzzles me...

originally posted by: elysiumfire
What I find unusual is that they have not named the pilots...Why? It would seem to me to be a deliberate act to crash the plane, even though I was
originally thinking that the pilot in the cockpit might have been overcome with lack of oxygen, but the flight continued on and made a slow controlled
descent.

The fact that the other pilot was 'locked out' indicates to me a deliberate act. Was the pilot in the cockpit of the Islamic faith?

Concur!
No pilot names suggests suspicion on the part of the authorities. Could this be a ISIS sympathizer?
So soon after Tunis and note Spain is only a boat ride away from Tunisia!

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